Home Again

Touch Down! It all feels like a whirlwind and all of a sudden I’m back in my winter woolens and diving into mountains of paper work in a dark room in back in Melbourne. Before I completely forget all the amazing experiences I had while on the east coast I thought i’d tell you all about it.

Beginning with a flight up to the Gold Coast to stay with my family for easter and a taking part in the Byron Bay Busking competition. It’s taken me a little coming to terms with the fact but the verdict is in. I am officially not a busker. However, I did witness many great buskers and consoled myself with some fantastic market food.

I didn’t have long to sulk because the next night I played an incredible show at the Troubadour in Brisbane. The other performers on this night Timothy Carrol and Indigo Kids were two inspiring local acts and a great introduction into Brisbane’s vibrant music scene.

A little show with the Matty Devitt Band in Lismore was a good fun pub atmosphere and Matty’s sound was a superb alt folk-rock experience. Unfortunately i was nursing a headache from watching Avatar 3D the night before and managed to leave half of my equipment at this show. But hey it wouldn’t be a tour if things didn’t go wrong.

One last show in QLD at a great bar in South Bank, Brisbane called The Joynt. I shared the stage with 3 amazing local acts Ofa, James Grehan and Pear. The only way to spend your Wednesday evening when in Brisbane from now on is this night that Ofa has begun curating at The Joynt. Each week new local, national and international acts will share the stage and I for one will be signing up again as soon as I can.

A flight to Sydney and then the dread of hiring a car for the first time and driving around Sydney’s inner suburbs ringing up e-toll bills and trying my best not to have a panic attack. Yep it’s official, I’m a grown up.

The first night in Sydney was a great bar, The Brass Monkey, in Cronulla about 50 minutes drive south of Sydney’s CBD an area otherwise known to locals as ‘The Shire’. I was sure that I was driving into an apocalypse as i neared ‘The Shire’ the heavens opened up and i thought again how glad I was that I had purchased that extra insurance for the rental car.

The show was a lovely evening consisting of 4 acts headlining the show Paul Applekamp, supports were, Newcastle act Benjalu, myself and the opening act a lovely young fellow named Andy Kelly.

The next day I lowered my heart rate by taking the hire car back and looked forward to experiencing Sydney’s public transport system first hand.

That evening I played at another great Sydney venue, this time a little closer to town, in Newtown called Notes. I was supporting two local Reggae acts which inspired me to attempt a reggae version of Not Unprepared, very fun but perhaps I am not built for reggae.

My last and I have to say favourite show for the whole tour was on Sunday the 11th of April at the Old Manly Boat Shed. It was a show of firsts with Corgel from Belgium playing their first ever Australian show and Ed Prescott’s first ever solo performance. My first was that i got to wear my new donald duck t-shirt and striped sailor pants for the first time which I bought at a great retro market in Sydney the day before. The night was so incredible as I have never heard such silence from a crowd. Some one even compared the audible ambience, other than the artist playing, to a library. Needless to say we will be doing some more shows together in the coming months and may even plan a tour together for later in the year.

Please check out the links to all the artists that i played with throughout my tour because they were all so amazing and if you like my music then i am sure you will like what they do. Some of them do not have pages but keep an eye online as they surely will soon.

A day of meetings and soaking up some divine Sydney autumn weather and we come back to present day.

Thanks to all of you who came to the shows and signed up to the mailing list over the course of my tour. I look forward to telling you about all sorts of things over the coming months leading up to my tours and album release.

Take care and keep an eye out for my next newsletter which will include updates on the new single’s ‘Not Unprepared’ progress, dates and details for a Kimberley tour in May and another east coast tour in June.

Tash